The Grand National meeting at Aintree provided an impressive assortment of memories to nurse fans of jump racing through the summer. There were a dozen still there with a chance with two to jump in the big race itself, Solwhit travelled and quickened like a top-class performer in the Aintree Hurdle and overall the Cheltenham form held up well. The Arkle Trophy in particular, widely dismissed as a sub-standard renewal beforehand, looks much better after the easy victories of Kalahari King and Tartak.

But as so often, with a major jumps festival, there were some melancholy memories too. Exotic Dancer ran his last race, dying of a heart attack half an hour later. Hear The Echo collapsed and died on the run-in in the Grand National. And then there was the twitching corpse of Mel In Blue in the Fox Hunters Chase, right in front of the BBC's landing-side camera at Becher's Brook.

This is not, of itself, anything for the sport to be ashamed about. It has been argued in this space on many occasions that honesty is the best response to the relatively tiny minority in the British public that would like to see the entire sport of racing banned. But it plays into their hands if a very public death like this one is simply ignored.

Horses die racing and always will, but they are not cows or pigs, which are bred specifically to be killed. Those who own, train and ride them care for them deeply and feel the loss most keenly when their horses suffer a fatal injury. As a result, it is the sport's duty to reduce the risks as far as possible, and a great deal has been done in that respect in recent years, particularly in respect of the Grand National.

But Mel In Blue's death came in the Fox Hunters, a race that asks 30 amateur riders – very amateur, many of them – to tackle the same big fences, albeit over less than a circuit and a half. Most races at the Grand National meeting are a cause for anticipation. This spectator, though, approaches the Fox Hunters with more foreboding than excitement and I rather doubt I am alone.

The latest renewal also saw an extraordinary, cartwheeling fall at The Chair by De Luian Gorm, described by Timeform as "a tearaway front-runner [who] was always likely to be a white-knuckle ride over these fences", while the manner in which several jockeys drove their horses on from the start could not help but bring the phrase "Death Or Glory" to mind.

Traditionalists and point-to-point fans may recoil from the idea that there is anything much wrong with that. It shows the same sort of fearless Corinthian spirit, they might well argue, that made Britain great.

But no race should ever be immune from criticism and, if nothing else, it is fair to ask the question: what does the Fox Hunters really add to the sport?

A sense of history, certainly, and that should not be dismissed too readily. And it is, without doubt, a spectacle, but then Christians versus lions at the Colosseum was probably sold as a spectacle, too.

The Grand National has benefited greatly from an increase in the quality of the horses in the field, as well as the rules – introduced along with the changes to Becher's 15 years ago – on minimum qualifications for jockeys. Neither will be easy to engineer for the Fox Hunters, in which the son or daughter of the trainer is often riding the family pet.

Yet, without improvements in one or the other, and ideally both, the Fox Hunters is going to look like ever more of an anachronism as time goes on, not least if the National continues its renaissance.

And before too long, it will not be a question of what the Fox Hunters brings to the sport, but rather of what it takes away.